Chromie Squiggles is an on-chain generative art collection from Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon (aka Snowfro). Even though it initially sparked controversy—“you paid what for those squiggly lines!?”—it has evolved into one of the most memetic and iconic NFT art collections. They come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, textures and colours, some rarer than others.

Public minting is paused because Art Blocks are reserving 719 of the total 10,000 supply for “manual distribution to collectors and community members over a longer period of time” [↗]. However, there’s a thriving secondary market with 213 squiggles currently listed [↗]. Over the last seven days, the average sale price was 12.05Ξ [↗], and the average floor price was 7Ξ [↗]. This article includes an overview of the project, detailed rarity information, market analytics and a collection of resources from the community.

“Simple and easily identifiable, each squiggle embodies the soul of the Art Blocks platform. Consider each my personal signature as an artist, developer and tinkerer.” — Snowfro

More than meets the eye

Chromie Squiggles is maybe one of the most historically significant NFT art collections. Top collector Derek Edward describes it as a core pillar of the NFT art space. First there was CryptoPunks, then Autoglyphs and then Chromie Squiggles, each project contributing another vital building block for on-chain generative art.

Art Blocks took what Larva Labs’ achieved with CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs and added an entirely new mechanic to the creative process, toying with notions of chance and surprise in which collectors create the art at the moment of purchase. The instant a purchase is made, the smart contract triggers a script and a few seconds later, buyers are presented with a completely new and unique piece from the collection.

Rarity

Type

Squiggles come in six main types: Normal (63.51%), Slinky (11.62%), Fuzzy (10.68%), Ribbed (7.74%), Bold (4.56%) and Pipe (1.89%) [↗]. While Normal Type squiggles are the most common, there are a few versions with rare Spectrum traits (see below).

Spectrum

Spectrum is a grouping of three traits (Colour Spread, Steps Between and Segments). Together they control the number of colour hues displayed and how they spread across the length of a squiggle. Spectrum can either be Normal (98.02%), HyperRainbow (1.34%), Full Spectrum (0.43%) or Perfect Spectrum (0.22%) [↗].

The maximum amount of colour hues displayed across a squiggle is 256. The end hue is always N-1 with N as the starting colour [↗]. Full Spectrum
shows almost all hues (within 1% of perfect) [↗]. The highly sought after HyperRainbow has minimal Colour Spread resulting in much choppier gradients (see Squiggle #3199).

If you see only two or three traits listed on OpenSea, try refreshing the metadata by clicking the refresh icon in the top right corner. A couple more items should appear.

Invisible Traits

Both Full Spectrum and Perfect Spectrum are considered invisible traits as you need to look at a squiggle’s metadata to identify them. Other hidden traits include “harmonics” or “ghosts”. These are Ribbed squiggles with a Ribbed Colour that blends perfectly into one of the backgrounds programmed into each squiggle.

In more technical terms, the Ribbed Colour has to be a value incremented by 25 to be classed as a ghost (0, 25, 50, 75 etc.). According to Filter Blocks, an unofficial index of Art Blocks projects, there are currently only 34 ghost squiggles in existence.

These traits are “unofficial” as they aren’t currently listed in the Chromie Squiggle metadata, but there are rumours in the Art Block Discord that suggests they may be added soon.

You can adjust the animation, background colour and colour rotation speed of every squiggle! Head to OpenSea or Art Blocks, click on a squiggle and then use the following controls: click to start and stop the animation, spacebar to cycle the background colour, and up and down arrows to adjust the colour rotation speed.

“Day 0” Squiggles

Another trait to keep an eye on is a squiggle’s mint date. Only 542 squiggles were minted on the day Art Blocks launched the project. These are often referred to as “Day 0” squiggles. For anyone looking to pick one up, a bunch recently came onto the market from longtime collector tigerwithpaws, some of which are listed near the floor.

The Rarest Squiggles

When several rare traits combine, they output an extremely rare squiggle. I’ve included a few below, but I highly recommend checking out 6ixty’s Chromie Squiggle museum for a more in-depth look.

If you’re looking for an easy way to download your squiggle for use on social media, check out Matt Deslaurier’s Art Blocks rendering tool. Use these specifications for a perfect loop: 60fps framerate, 4.2s duration, 0 x 0 dimensions.

Market

At the time of writing, there are 213 squiggles for sale on the secondary market [↗]. The average sale price over the last 7 days is 12.05Ξ [↗] and the current floor price is sitting at 8Ξ [↗]. Information was last updated on March 25th 2022.

Over the last seven days, the cheapest 10% of squiggles were sold for 6.58Ξ or less, half were sold for less than 7.66Ξ and the most expensive 10% were sold for 9.26Ξ or more.

Recent News

Sotheby’s Auction. Sotheby’s recently auctioned off a series of 10 Unminted Chromie Squiggles. It was sold to metasmurf for $478,800 (116Ξ at the time).

SquiggleDAO. A decentralised art house and foundry for on-chain generative art. To join the members-only section of the Discord you must own either a Chromie Squiggle or 1,000 $SQUIG tokens. SquiggleDAO is not officially linked with Art Blocks.

Resources

Chromie Squiggles Explorer. The single best resource on Chromie Squiggles. Learn more about the project, view rarity stats and browse a curated collection of the rarest squiggles.

Dune Analytics - Art Blocks Rarity Guide. A Dune Analytics dashboard by RantumBits showing key data for Art Block projects.

Punks, Squiggles, and the Future of Generative Media. Derek Edward, traces the roots of Generative Art from the 50s and 60s, exploring work from Herbert Franke and Vera Molnár, all the way through to CryptoPunks, Autoglyphs and Chromie Squiggles.

Chromies Squiggles on Rarity Guide. An Art Blocks rarity tool. It gives a good overview of Chromie Squiggle mint counts and the percentage of supply for each trait.

PROOF Podcast - Generative NFT Art with Erick Snowfro. Co-Founder and CEO of PROOF, Kevin Rose, sits down with Snowfro to discuss all things generative art and how Art Block came to be a leading NFT art platform.

Chromie Squiggles on Wgmi.io. See wgmi.io from NFTommo for floor price data over the last seven days. Ctrl + F for “Chromie Squiggles”.

Chromie Squiggles on NFT Price Floor. A really neat snapshot of recent Chromie Squiggles sales data.

Cool Collections

punk6529’s collection. He’s in the process of collecting one of every squiggle variation. You can follow his progress here.

SquiggleDAO’s collection. They recently showcased eight squiggles from their treasury at the imnotArt gallery in Chicago.

Feel free to reach out on Twitter or Discord if you have any questions!